Your Kitchen Through Time

The first edition tells the story of our kitchen in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Many British kitchens at the start of the 1950s were dull, cramped, mis-matched and relied heavily on one thing – elbow grease! We discover the kitchen was the place of hard graft in a decade when housewives spent an astonishing 57 hours a week on domestic work. Janet Ellis, Danny John-Jules and Jenny Eclair try to whisk egg whites using the rotary hand-whisk and discover it's very hard work.

It was all a far cry from the colourful, spacious and gadget-filled kitchens we glimpsed on new US TV shows like I Love Lucy and at the Ideal Home Exhibition - but change was coming…

The 1960s witnessed a kitchen revolution thanks to rising incomes, advancing technology and exciting new fashions. Bright colours and patterns appeared on our walls and space-age equipment like Teflon saucepans, electric toasters and automatic kettles made life a whole lot easier. Embodying this new age of labour-saving ease was the Kenwood Chef (invented by Mr Ken Wood) which claimed to do everything from stuffing sausages to peeling potatoes. Our celebrities find out if it really made things as easy as it claimed.

By the 1970s, our kitchens became brown, spice-racks appeared, and we fell in love Morecambe and Wise's iconic breakfast sketch. And as many of us now owned our homes, we were intent on showing them off to the neighbours. Innovations like the hostess trolley helped dinner parties go with a swing, while our famous faces get to grips with that terrifying invention: the electric carving knife. But new technology wasn't for everyone. We discover how some turned their back on this gadget-filled kitchen and instead took inspiration from Tom and Barbara in The Good Life.

By the end of the decade, as more women went out to work, the kitchen increasingly became a place of convenience. Gadget-makers were quick to take advantage, introducing the Breville snack ‘n' sandwich toaster, which our panel attempt to use without burning their mouths on molten cheese – easier said than done!

In this edition, we tell the story of our kitchen from the 1980s to the present day.

In the early 1980s it's out with the browns and oranges of the 1970s and in with bright white, high-tech kitchens that millions of us - including Phil Vickery - bought at vast, new out-of-town outlets like MFI.

We explore the rise of the microwave. Originally sold as a device to cook absolutely anything, including a three-course meal, our celeb panel get stuck in to see if these claims hold true – Jenny zaps corn on the cob, Danny microwaves a steak (trained chefs look away now) and Janet rustles up boozy bananas.

Britons got bolder in the kitchen as the decade progressed and started cooking foreign food they had previously only enjoyed in restaurants or as takeaways. Ken Hom recalls how he introduced the wok and home-cooked Chinese food in his groundbreaking 1980s TV series. Not that we were quite ready to put away our old favourites yet. We tell the story of how another 80s innovation, the electric deep fat fryer, allowed us to indulge our love of chips much more safely than the highly flammable chip pans of old.

In the 1990s, we embraced a traditional country kitchen look of the type beloved of Hyacinth Bucket and we relive the hilarious moment she goes to a local kitchen showroom to ‘test' the work surfaces by smearing them with a range of condiments before committing to a purchase.

We also recall the rise of IKEA in the second half of the decade and the memorable ‘Chuck out the Chintz' advert that paved the way for a sleeker, Scandi type of kitchen. RIP patterned pelmets and lace doilies!

Taking a trip down TV memory lane, Lesley Waters recalls her time on Ready Steady Cook and we discover how tipping out a carrier bag of ingredients inspired us to get cooking in our own kitchens.

By the end of the 1990s there were new celebrity TV chefs on the scene and we discover how Jamie Oliver broke the mould with his new style of cooking show filmed in his own kitchen, complete with wobbly camerawork. And we reveal how he impacted kitchen gadget sales, particularly the pasta maker. Our celebrity panel investigate if it really was as easy to use as Jamie made it seem!

We enter the 21st century and discover how many of our kitchens now dominate our downstairs and come complete with dining areas and a kitchen island. We find out how recent health crazes have shaped many of the gadgets we now buy, and our celeb panel attempts to get to grips with the spiralizer. And finally we look to the future and learn how AI and other innovations are revolutionizing our kitchens still further…